Unless the negligence is of high order, Medical Professional should not be dragged into criminal proceedings ILW News Updates Tue, Feb 18, 2020, at ,04:09 PM Anjana Agnihotri vs. State of Haryana |06/02/2020 Supreme Court bench of Justice Deepak Gupta and Justice Hemant Gupta has held that medical professionals should not be dragged into criminal proceedings unless negligence of a high order is shown. In the present case, a doctor was accused of not attending a woman after a caesarean operation which resulted in her death. Referring to the judgement Jacob Mathew's Case the Supreme Court where it was held that “in criminal law medical professionals are placed on a pedestal different from ordinary mortals. To prosecute the medical professionals for negligence under criminal law, something more than mere negligence had to be proved. Medical professionals deal with patients and they are expected to make the best decisions in the circumstances of the case. Sometimes, the decision may not be correct, and that would not mean that the medical professional is guilty of criminal negligence. Such a medical professional may be liable to pay damages but unless negligence of a high order is shown the medical professionals should not be dragged into criminal proceedings.” https://publication.intolegalworld.com/100-landmark-judgment-2019-20.aspx In the present case, the trial court allowed the petitioner's application but the appellate court reversed the trial court order. The Apex Court held that "In the present case the appellants failed to obtain any opinion of an independent doctor. The postmortem report does not show that the death of Santosh Rani had occurred due to the transfusion of blood. The only negligence that could be attributed to the accused is that they carried out the blood transfusion in violation of some instructions issued by the Chief Medical Officer that blood should be obtained from a licensed blood bank and that no direct blood transfusion from the donor to the patient should be done. In our opinion even if this is true the negligence is not such as to fall within the ambit of Jacob Mathew's case."